Many Web Conferencing solutions have a presentation sharing feature that allows a presenter to upload a presentation and have attendees automatically download and view the presentation in sync with the presenter. In such an arrangement, a presenter, using a computing device (e.g., a presentation host), can upload the presentation to a server (e.g., a presentation server) for access by other attendees using computing systems remote from the presenter. The presenter can direct viewing of the presentation by directing the presentation at their computing system.
When the presenter uploads the presentation to a server, the presentation is typically converted into a number of resources that can be used by client devices to view the presentation. One reason a number of resources are created is to accommodate different capabilities of the remote computing devices attempting to view/access the presentation. For example, although some remote computing devices may be able to access the presentation using a presentation application program that is the same as the one at the host computer, other remote computing devices used by attendees may lack application software capable of rendering the presentation. In such cases, alternative forms of the presentation can be provided to those computing systems. Those alternative forms of the presentation can typically be viewed within widely available software, such as a web browser.
To convert the presentation into a number of resources requires a substantial amount of time. For example, it can take up to or over a minute to create each of the presentation resources used to ensure compatibility across devices. Because the presentation typically is completely converted prior to being uploaded to the presentation server, there is a substantial lag time between when a presenter makes a presentation available for viewing and when the presentation is in fact available to be viewed by remote systems accessing the presentation server.